Describing the killing of Sikhs in 1984 as the “Fourth Holocaust (Ghallughara)”, Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal on Saturday said the upcoming November 1984 Sikh carnage memorial, being built by the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC), would preserve the history of this barbaric incident for generations to come.
Addressing a gathering before performing the ground-breaking ceremony to start the construction work of the memorial at Gurdwara Rakabganj in Delhi, the chief minister, accompanied by deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal and union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal, said the SAD would continue its struggle to bring each guilty to book.
Badal said the Sikhs had faced four major holocausts in Sikh history of which two were a result of the tyranny of the Mughal rule. He said it was unimaginable that in free India, the country’s own government would unleash terror on them by two holocausts -- during Operation Bluestar and after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, in which nearly 5,000 innocents Sikhs were killed in Delhi alone besides around 10,000 across the country.
The chief minister said the memorial would be a tribute to the memory of the martyrs and a salute to the bravery of other victims. He said senior Congress leaders, including HKL Bhagat, Sajjan Kumar, Jagdish Tytler and others sponsored the massacre, adding that responsible and respected independent witnesses saw Congress leaders lead the gangs of killers and looters into Sikh localities to carry out the country’s most shameful massacre.
{{/usCountry}}The chief minister said the memorial would be a tribute to the memory of the martyrs and a salute to the bravery of other victims. He said senior Congress leaders, including HKL Bhagat, Sajjan Kumar, Jagdish Tytler and others sponsored the massacre, adding that responsible and respected independent witnesses saw Congress leaders lead the gangs of killers and looters into Sikh localities to carry out the country’s most shameful massacre.
{{/usCountry}}Badal said special dedicated courts be set up to expedite the delivery of justice where FIRs had been registered and challans presented.
The chief minister said all closed cases should be re-investigated and thereafter challans presented before the special dedicated courts.
Speaking on the occasion, Sukhbir said, “A positive beginning has been made by the NDA government by giving financial assistance of Rs 5 lakh to each of the victims of the carnage, but this can never compensate the enormous loss suffered by the families. These families can get a bit of consolation only if the culprits were convicted.”
DSGMC president Manjit Singh GK said the memorial was an attempt to pay homage to the martyrs and victims of the carnage.